


Home Is Where The Heart Is

by orphan_account



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: 2nd person POV, Again, Angst, Gen, I don't know what to tag this as, I don't mind, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, but that's because I'm gay, but think what you will of this, experiment au, have fun reading this, it wasn't written with a ship in mind, lab AU, machinery and mermaids, okay it's a little gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22811644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: You return to a place you never thought you would.You return to your heart.More Lab AU, this time ft. an escape!! and going back to get someone you left behind, but just crying at them insteadYanno?
Relationships: None
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Home Is Where The Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gay
> 
> That is all

You never thought you’d come back. You  _ knew _ you would. You knew, know, and always have known, that you’d have to return to that awful place eventually. You just didn’t think it would take this long.

Every hour, every second, every day, every  _ year, _ you knew it was coming. You hated that it took years. The last time you saw him, you two had fought. It was mere moments before the puppet and the living battery had enacted their plan that your argument had ended, and you don’t think he even looked. He was facing the wall, and he didn’t turn around once. Not for the halved boy, not for the halved girl, not even for you. Especially not for you.

Everyone that could had hit the glass on his tank when they passed to try to get him to fight as well, but he didn’t budge. He didn’t want to. You suppose, with what you’ve been told, that maybe he thought it was home. He didn’t want to leave. He never minded their tests, even though they turned him into a monster long before you had arrived. He didn’t mind that they’d stolen his chance of escaping days after you proposed the idea. 

Or maybe it was because you’d yelled at him to leave you alone. To shut up, to just listen. That he was brainwashed. That he didn’t give two shits about what happened to you and the others, because this was ‘home’.

But he did. You know he did.

Every time you woke up, groggy and in pain from whatever they’d chosen to fix that time, he was waiting for you. He waited for the halved girl, the siren, the floating boy. He waited for the halved boy, the puppet, the battery, even the tree and the betrayed scientist. The statue, the doll, the captive and the guardian, the spike backed one and the clairvoyant, the kitsune and the robot. Everyone. 

He waved when they passed, and he always cried for them. It probably annoyed the guards and faculty how many times they had to clear the oil away. It was a sad sort of endearment to you, although you wished you weren't the reason his tank clouded over that day.

He was kind to you, like your mother was. He always tried to help through the glass. He'd broken that barrier at least twice, trying to give you a distraction to escape with. He even called you Home. 

You were his home, you realized for the tenth time today. You were his home, and you'd broken that trust by starting the fight. 

And he was your heart. 

He was your heart, and no matter how angry or scared or caught in the moment if running you were, you left him. Everyone did. You all left him back there, and no one had told the people who found you that you'd left someone behind. No one even knew.

You suppose it was good that no one knew, in a sick way. You used to call him by a name out of habit. You found out later that that was very close to his real name, the name he forgot. You know he'd been there since he was little, you know there was a missing children's report on the television when you were that age.

You know they said he was dead. And you know it was him. You think everyone else knows, too, but you all kept your mouths shut. It was sick, and horrible, and twisted, but you all knew that even if someone knew he was there, he was too far gone to be really saved.

And yet, here you were, in the passenger seat of a van outside of the entrance to the facility. If he was still alive, you doubted he'd recognize you. They were always messing with his brain, and you'd undergone changes of your own.

They couldn't do anything about your ears or tail, but they'd fixed your bone structure. You'd had to learn how to walk again, and you still sometimes had issues holding a pencil, but you were as fixed as you could be. They always asked if you really wanted to be fixed. You just wanted to be okay. 

Your mom had helped you cut your hair again, like it was back before everything happened. The hamsters that had been stuck with you stuck by your side whenever possible, burrowing into your purple scarf. You started to call them your Devas. You tried to talk like you used to, but it just took so much energy. You still threw in a few good long words into your sentences sometimes. Your mom always smiled a little when you did and called you her little sorcerer, even if you weren't a child anymore.

You don't think you've ever missed anyone as much as you missed your mother or your Heart.

The driver looked over at you. He was an old friend, and old classmate. The Lucky one. The truly, truly lucky one…

He told you you didn't need to go in, that he and the officers in the back seat needed directions. You didn't even have to drive with them, no, you could've just told them by word alone. You insisted.

You shook your head and unbuckled the seatbelt. You were going in there. You had to. Even if he wasn't… even if he didn't recognize you, you had to apologize. For years, the last words you'd said to him weighed so heavily on your shoulders that your mother said you looked slumped over most of the time. You didn't want to worry her.

It was only when the white haired man tapped you that you realized you'd zoned out. You told him you were going in no matter what, and all he did was sigh.

You all climbed out of the van and headed toward the gates. Once you were let in, you could feel eyes on you. You knew. They knew. They all knew. No one spoke.

You headed down a hallway, your hallway. Your heart sunk deep past your feet when you saw what you hoped you wouldn't ever see. Your cell was just as you'd left it, and right next to it was a cell just like it. It wasn't supposed to be just like it. It was supposed to be full of water.

The others had already gone to deal with Professor Enoshima, and you were left alone in the hall after assuring them that you were fine. You stepped closer to the glass. It was scored, long, thin scratches along all sides. There were wider ones, too, and you know those weren't from his claws. They worry you.

You look closer, straining your eyes. He'd carved a house under the bed he never used, years ago, long before the fight. Your sunken heart shatters. It's gone, and in its place, angry claw marks tear up the wall. You feel tears on your cheeks, and it takes you a few moments to realize that you're crying.

You wipe the water off of your face, whisper your apology, and turn. You didn't expect for someone else to be standing there. You shriek, but he covers your mouth before any noise can really escape. He's fast. You panic for a few more seconds, and then you calm down.

He's staring directly into your eyes, and you feel like the intense red should scare you dead, but it doesn't. His hair seems to float around him like some sort of ritualistic portal. And then you notice it: the hospital gown looking attire. You'd heard rumors of there being another one left behind, but you never thought they were true. You never thought that you'd failed  _ two  _ people. 

He takes his hand away slowly, and mutters words you've never been so happy to hear.

_ "He was moved." _

You guess you brighten, because he turns around and starts walking out of the hallway. You walk past empty cells, empty labs, and empty test rooms. You realize, as you walk, that the boy (man?) leading you is familiar. You're not sure how, though.

He leads you down a long flight of stairs, and you're panting by the time you two reach the bottom. He hasn't even taken a deep breath. That's what this place does to you, you guess. He disappears—literally—when you two reach a door. For a terrifying second, you think he's leaving you here alone. Lost. Trapped again. The fear eases when the door in front of you opens to reveal him. He hasn't expressed a thing, and you think he sort of looks like the puppet. Or, how the puppet used to look. No expression whatsoever paired with intense red eyes. Almost scary.

You follow him into the room and almost run right into a metal railing. When the boy flicks on the lights, you see why it's there. You're in a large, circular room. It's huge, and you think that this must be how Corgis feel as you look around. You feel small. It's like somebody took a school gymnasium and made it round.

And in the center of it all is churning black water. You understand now. The railings kept you from falling into what looks like Hell's sea. The black haired boy points into the water, and speaks again. A number, but not your neighbor's original number.

_ "One." _

A shriek rings out. It sounds like metal on metal, mixed with screams you don't want to remember. The water whirls so fast that it makes you dizzy. You stumble, and grip the railing as tight as you can. You punch your eyes shut, until you feel a hand on your shoulder. It isn't for comfort. It's for stability. It's the red eyed stranger. 

When you open your eyes again, the dizzy feeling is gone. It's probably because of him. He stares down at the churning water. He takes a step back, and you soon see why. You remember when you left that they'd injected the shark toothed one with something that had him grow, but you didn't think it would be to this extent.

When his head breaks the surface of the water, you can't help but step back, too. He doesn't have eyes anymore—at least, no iris. His face is more metal than flesh, but the pink hair is still there, long, heavy, and soaked. It lays flat above the water, but from what you can see of the water, most of it is floating awry. What's scary is that he's grown so large that he could probably wrap an entire webbed and clawed hand around you with ease. Your head would stick out, but you think that that's good.

All you can see is the pink of his eyes, though. They're the size of a beach ball; bigger than a basketball, but not so big they're overwhelming. The bits of skin that can be seen around his mouth glow slightly with the bioluminescent spots he's always had.

You can't tell if you're crying again or if you've been splashed.

You stare at him for a long minute, and he back at you. The silence is so thick you wonder how he hasn't suffocated yet, and then you hear it.

Clicks, like slow moving gears, little ticks going the speed of a snail. He cocks his head a little, and you notice he hasn't blinked those enormous eyes once. And then he makes the shrieking noise again.

It sounds like the effects they use for angry an Tyrannosaurus Rex in the dinosaur movies you don't like. It sounds like a car accident, like grinding metal, like screams. All in one.

And yet it isn't a threatening sound, somehow. You know it's a question. A wonder, a thought or memory. You can't tell what he's trying to say, but you know the tone. And you know now that you were crying. Sobbing, actually, said the black haired boy when he recounted it. 

Your old friend, your old heart, he gets close to the rail, and bends it when he grabs the metal to pull himself up just a little more to see you better. He's never had good sight. 

And you smile. You smile, and you sob, and you apologize. You put a hand on his forehead and you apologize so many times. He doesn't smile, but he knows, and you know that he knows, because he leans into the touch and the clicks sound out again. 

You remember when you first came here, you'd told him that home was where the heart was. Maybe the hoke would move, maybe the heart would move, but you think that they always come back together. 

You just wish he remembered you clearly enough to be angry.


End file.
